The Solopreneur Life’s “Friday Bits” Column #37

It’s the end of the week, and just like almost every Friday at The Solopreneur Life, I have some tasty, mostly-healthy bits of information to share with you.

This week’s menu includes:
• Feng Shui for solopreneurs
• Turning passion into profit
• Five things we can learn about marketing from Howard Stern
• Fear and loathing in Solopreneurville
• How to make solopreneurship easier

The article’s author, Sheree Diamond, says, “An environment that represents your goals and dreams will provide you with the essential foundation to achieve your greatness. Feng Shui offers a proven system to do just that. That’s why some people say that it works like magic.”

Here are a couple of Sheree’s tips:

• Clear your clutter. A house filled with clutter will block your abundance.

• Place a wind chime outside your front entrance to get the energy moving and have it ring in new opportunities.

Turning Passion Into Profit

I found an article this week at More.com called “18 Entrepreneurs We Love.” For example, there’s Linh Reilly, who was working as a full-time benefits consultant when her hobby of making homemade Asian sauces turned into a booming business.

She started selling bottles at her daughter’s school Christmas fair, and her product sold out in an hour. She then distributed sauces to homes and small businesses around her community. After doing more research in food processing, Reilly launched Asian Creations and in 2005 she quit her full-time job and committed to her sauces-a wise decision. A year later Whole Foods decided to distribute Asian Creations creating an even bigger buzz around her already successful company.

Yes, he’s the king of all media, but Howard’s “thing” is radio. He doesn’t take time off to write his books. He won’t take a day off to fly to LA to do Jimmy Kimmel to promote his show…Even when he was filming his movie, they would shoot in the afternoon and evening so he could still keep doing the radio show every morning. His commitment to what some say is an almost-dead medium is what keeps his millions of listeners committed, too…

…Doing different things is okay, of course, especially if you love all the things you do. But keeping focus on your primary thing will help you make choices (e.g. “I’ll do Twitter, but not Facebook”) so you can prioritize when you’re feeling scattered and burned out.

That’s superb advice. I need to follow it. 😉

Fear and Loathing In Solopreneurville

Does fear and doubt ever paralyze your spirit and your business? You’re not alone. I think nearly every solopreneur has faced the darkness of doubt. Last week New York Enterprise Report published a vivid description of what the fear feels like in a post titled, “What an Entrepreneur Really Thinks About at 4 a.m.” Here’s an excerpt:

With everything on my mind I simply don’t sleep anymore. Too much to do, too much to worry about, too many things to fix in my business life, too many things to handle in my family and my personal life, and of course too little time…It’s thankless and the risks are starting to outweigh the rewards…I thought I’d be happy being an entrepreneur. I thought I’d be happy being a creator. I used to a few years ago. I used to enjoy life. But overall, not anymore.

That’s strong stuff. How do you deal with doubt and crises of confidence? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

New LinkedIn Features

Linda Cole wrote an article for SocialMediaExaminer.com titled, “8 New LinkedIn Features Worth Exploration.” The first feature she highlights is intriguing: free banner advertising that you can link to wherever you want.

How to Make Solopreneurship Easier

My BlogTalkRadio show on Monday (noon CST) is titled, “In Business for Yourself, Not By Yourself; How to Make Solopreneurship Easier.” As solopreneurs, we didn’t start our businesses in order to do accounting, taxes, and other onerous tasks that rob us of time that’s better spent on doing work that brings in money. So what can we do? Hiring outside help is an option, and my guest on Monday, Erik Vonk, the founder and CEO of Back Of the House, or BOTH, a one-stop shop for back-office support for solopreneurs, will explain. In this show we will learn:

• How much time we can recover by outsourcing non-core activities.

• Why we should consider incorporation.

• Our options for meeting IT challenges.

Erik is a successful serial entrepreneur, an expert in the field of work and the author of “Don’t Get A Job, Get a Life,” in which he reinvents the way work works.

Comments

Thanks for the pointer to the LinkedIn Company page tips – didn’t know about all those nice opportunities. That said, if I have to put effort into yet another social media community (beyond Facebook and Twitter), I’ll be violating Mr. Sterns’s sage advice…

On the Feng Shui: I guess I do incorporate a bit of that in my working space – it’s definitely an embodiment of my goals and dreams: